


For One Glorious Moment

by Ferith12



Series: A Shining Brokenness [3]
Category: DCU
Genre: And a little crazy, Dick Grayson is ex-Talon, Gen, Hope?, It Gets Worse Before it Gets Better?, Jason is a little crazy too, Just a different kind of crazy, The Batfamily is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason is back from the dead and everything is perfect.  For one single moment.<br/>Then it falls apart spectacularly.</p>
<p>Somehow Dick is the emotionally healthy one in this family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For One Glorious Moment

Jason was alive. The thought filled Dick with joy and hope and more happy, fuzzy feelings than he had any idea what to do with, and so he flipped and twisted and danced as he flew through the Gotham sky cackling all the way. Because Jason was alive. And sure he was sort of crazy and homicidal, and probably killing a bunch of people now, but eh. Details. 

Dick knew that he should really be a lot more worried about the people Jason was killing, but he still wasn’t particularly good at the empathy stuff when it came to people he didn’t personally and couldn’t actually see, and right now he was drowning in euphoria and he could swear there were unicorns and and stardust pixies and rainbows dancing in the sky and all around him. Which made him a little scared that this whole thing wasn’t real and just a dream. But he thought he could detect the familiar hallucination feel to it all so he guessed his brain had decided to show him something nice for once instead of the usual blood and gore and guilt. Which was AWESOME in a kind of messed up way. 

But yeah. The gang that Jason was shooting up. Some of them might not even be all that terrible of people. Probably a bit less flipping and a bit more speeding was in order. 

And so Dick swung through the city, maybe faster than he had ever done before, breath panting and heart squealing and still seeing all those awesome starbursts and unicorns and rainbow thingies. 

And there was Jason, shooting people left and right and Dick LAUNCHED himself at him, dodging bullets mid air, and the look on Jason’s face was priceless as Dick screeched “LITTLE WING!” for all the world like a twelve year old girl and knocked them both over in an (almost) bone crushing hug.

Dick decided he might as well not acknowledge the fact the rainbows bathing the gotham street in bright, pretty lights and the puppy-dogs surrounding them, waving their fluffy tales exuberantly in such an adorably cuddly way, and the Elephant (who looked suspiciously like Zitka) trumpeting triumphantly nearby were all figments of his weird imagination, because Jason himself, JASON, Dick’s brother, was definitely real, and despite the fact that the only reason that Jason hadn’t tried to shoot him yet was that he was still in shock, and maybe also because Dick had his arms pinned in his hug and he couldn’t move, despite all that, this moment was absolutely perfect.

But of course it didn’t last. For that one moment it had been perfect, but then Jason had growled at him and shoved him off of him with enough force to crack one of his ribs (it was, after all, a hug and not a restraining move, so escaping from it had been actually pretty easy once Jason had gotten over his shock). And then Batman was there and he said all the wrong things, and Dick hadn’t really had the presence of mind to intervene and say all the right things because, well, sparkles and puppy dogs and freaking ZITKA who he SO wanted to run over to and sit on and talk to, but as she was just a hallucination he had to restrain himself, because trying that would have been ridiculous and totally spill the beans on his being crazy. 

And then Tim had come along and all hell had broken loose.

It had ended with Jason running off spewing profanity and promising that next time he’d just shoot them all, and Tim looking tiny and miserable and filled with sub zero self esteem. Bruce, of course, had been all stoic and Batman like, just letting a little of his disappointment show because he didn’t want to admit how hurt he was. Way to go Bruce. You really know how to let you’re prodigal sons know that inside you’re ready to welcome them back with open arms. And of course it was at that moment that all of Dick’s happy rainbows and puppy dogs had decided to vanish. And he felt sort of disgusted with himself, because if he hadn’t let his stupid brain distract him, he might have been able to resolve things because that was his job as the emotionally healthy one in the family. Yeah, in this messed up family he was the most emotionally capable. Wasn’t THAT just sad.

Any way, everything had just gotten worse from there and Bruce had pretty much decided to pretend Jason was still dead and there was this new crazy stranger running around with a slightly older version of of Jason’s face, which really wasn’t fair at all to Jason. (Dick had lost all his memories and been turned into a killing machine, but he had still been DICK, even before he could remember that was his name.) Jason still remembered everything, he even remembered DYING (and that was one memory that Dick was really glad he’d never gotten back) and still people treated like he wasn’t the same person anymore because he’d died and gone slightly crazy and killed people. Bruce was almost acting like Jason was irredeemable, like once a killer always a killer kind of deal, which was actually making Dick REALLY uncomfortable. Not that he would point out to Bruce how unfair it was to treat Jason that way when he was standing right there, but still.

And of course Dick hadn’t really helped matters that much. Because Jason had almost killed Tim, poor adorable, sweet, genius and yet stupid enough to walk right into this mess Tim, Tim who was Dick’s tiny little brother, and Dick had seen red and found it SO hard not to just go after Jason with his swords and kill him. It was that, it’s hard to have empathy for people who weren’t bleeding out in front of him, thing again. So Dick had gone after Jason and beat him up nearly as badly as Jason had beaten Tim.

In retrospect he was REALLY glad it had just been with his escrima sticks and not a crowbar or something. His stupid brain morphed them into swords like he’d used as a Talon, and for a full ten seconds he thought he’d killed his little brother, and was HAPPY about it, because he was just that mad. Then Jason groaned and the illusion shattered and Dick rushed him to Leslie. 

All that had been a year ago now, and Red Hood was still bitter and killing things because, for one, it appeased his great big awesome sense of justice, and because killing things ( and blowing them up) was the only way he knew how to get the bitterness out of his system. Yeah. The ex brainwashed to feel no emotions talon who was a little more than slightly crazy really was the emotionally healthy one.

Dick hadn’t seen Jason since the almost killing him instance. And as much as he was ashamed to admit it, it was partly by choice. Dick was afraid that if he hung out with Jason too much then Jason would do something that would make Dick want to kill him again. Jason made Dick scared of himself again, as he hadn’t been for years. 

So it was a surprise when Dick was going off on his merry way, flipping gleefully through patrol, and saw Jason in his leather jacket and red hood (helmet really, but hood sounded cooler. And Jason thought he was SO grown up.) brooding.

And so Dick hesitated when he saw that. He admitted it, he hesitated. But but then he landed on the rooftop and said,

“Hey, little wing.”

Because despite it all Dick was the emotionally healthy one in this messed up family, and who cared if there were about a million ways this could blow up in his face, he loved his little brother and he was going to try to fix this.

He’d always been stupidly optimistic anyways.


End file.
